You and Your Camera: Take Your Own Stock Photos

Taking your own stock photos is pretty easy to do. You can also use this exercise as a way of improving your photography skills. You may also find yourself coming up with new ideas for content. Either way you end up with photographs you own and no worries about buying photos or using someone else’s image without permission.

Why Take Stock Photos

For bloggers, images are essential to telling and sharing our content. We use images to illustrate our topic. We include pinnable images in our posts to help our pins go viral on Pinterest. The bigger the image the better on Google+. Instagram is all about images. Even Twitter is including images!

Stock Photos are basically generic images. More conceptual and vague stock photos can be tweaked to fit the topic of a blog post if you don’t have the perfect photo already. They can help illustrate a point being made in the post visually.

When you own the stock photo, you can tweak it to your heart’s content. When you purchase a stock photo, you are limited by the restrictions placed by the photographer on their work.

Photo Composition

Before you start, study other bloggers’ work. Find images that stick with you and try to understand how the blogger composed the picture to capture your attention. Go outside your niche and study photo-rich topics like food, home decorating, and crafts.

Save yourself editing time by composing the image in your camera. If you’re doing a close up of an object, crop as much as you can out of the picture. Take horizontal and vertical versions of the image. The horizontal version is good for blog posts, Instagram, Facebook, and Google+. Vertical images do better on Pinterest, plus they lend themselves better to titles.

Landscape/horizontal

Portrait/vertical

Become familiar with the rule of thirds. Imagine a photo being divided into thirds horizontally and vertically like the example below. The most visually pleasing composition is when the subject is placed where the lines intersect. Looking at the photo below, I should have moved over to the right to shift the chairs over to the left.

Avoid centering your subject in the photo. Use leading lines to draw the eye to the subject. The best leading lines are diagonal ones crossing the photo rather than going perfectly horizontal or vertical.

Photography Inspiration: Blogs

Meet Barb

Barb Hoyer has written 4364 posts.

After working in the fundraising world for over ten years, Barb is an avid runner, writer, photographer, parent volunteer, and lover of dictionaries and thesauruses. Wife to an engineer and mom to 5 kids, Barb lives in the suburbs of Philly. Her idea of relaxation is an afternoon on the couch with a stack of books.

Comments

Great ideas! I am currently working on a stock photo file for Spring pictures. It seems like you can’t have enough of those!! Maybe each day I can use your suggestions and take 20 min to find things to photograph.Jennifer @Making Our Life Matter recently posted..Simple Woman’s Daybook 04.28.14

Great tips! I love how easy it is if you just remember to pull out the smartphone on a walk, or, well, anywhere! After all… I know I always have my phone and therefore camera with me!Stephanie recently posted..Morning Coffee with the Best Coffee Maker

I love this post Barb! I got a new camera last year and love it..but I have yet to actually sit down and figure out the ton of stuff it does or how to take really awesome pics. with it!
Thanks for sharing!shari lynne @ faith filled food for moms recently posted..Salisbury Steak with Frozen Burgers

Thank you! Some great tips! I try to take most of my pictures, but definitely can use some tips! It would save me a lot of time in editing if I could just take a better picture!!Elizabeth recently posted..Top 10 Posts from April 2014

I love taking my own photos for my blog simply because I can do what I want with them and not worry about copyrights. These are great tips–pinning this to my blog board!Carrie This Home recently posted..Sugar Body Scrub (With Free Printable Labels)

Great idea! I have lots of my own photos to choose from, but every now and then I need a quirky one, like a stop sign. Your list is excellent. Visiting today via A Delightsome Life.Diana Petrillo recently posted..Ten Decorating Ideas Using Vintage Buttons

I probably have a ton of potential stock photos in my photo library! Thanks for the reminder to take a look around, and for the great tips!Michelle @ A Dish of Daily Life recently posted..The Non-Designers Guide to Graphic Design

Thanks for the great tips! I’m fairly new to the blogging world and it hasn’t taken me long at all to realize how important great photography is. Your ideas will go long way in helping me to create my own photos.Candy recently posted..What…Me Worry?

What a terrific post! I absolutely love taking pictures and always use my own photography on my blog, but you have given me even more ideas for photos. Thank you! I’m definitely pinning this so I can refer back to it for inspiration.Lila recently posted..Co-Sleeping – Shhhh. The Baby’s Sleeping (…in our bed, *gasp*!)

Excellent ideas! Thank you for the inspiration and tips. Also, I didn’t know about the upcoming updates to Ruth’s book – thank you for the heads up! Enjoy your day Leanne Wrench recently posted..Chocolate Orange Oat Bars

Barbara,
Thank you so much for this great post. I learned a lot and now know where else to turn with your suggestions for photo inspiration. This is really helpful information. I am going to start bringing the camera with me much more often
SheilaSheila recently posted..Alphabeasties, A Must See Alphabet Book

I love this, found you on ‘Thursday Favourite Things’ and as a relatively new blogger this is a great post. I have spent considerable time working on my product photography for my jewellery, but now have to learn to move outside my small studio lightbox setup so I can take pictures for my blog. Thanks for the tips. xxx RachelRachel @ Craft, Art & Mess recently posted..Outrageously Impractical Jewellery…

Great tips! I always feel much better using my own stock photos even if they’re not as good. Otherwise, I feel like cheating. Silly, I know Thank you so much for linking up with Thursday Favorite Things

All word and picture content here is my own, unless otherwise stated, when credit is given. You are welcome to link here. If you wish to use any of my images please feel free to contact me.

A Life in Balance is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.